J99, Operation Mindcrime is an amazing record. Saw Queensryche twice. Geoff Tate is an amazing vocalist and the drummer is first rate. Do you feel Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is a great concept album, or are you referring strictly to the metal scene?

J99, Operation Mindcrime is an amazing record. Saw Queensryche twice. Geoff Tate is an amazing vocalist and the drummer is first rate. Do you feel Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is a great concept album, or are you referring strictly to the metal scene?

Well yeah, "The Wall" and well at least a couple more records Floyd did are considered great concepts, but I'm just not as into them as I am the Ryche', I'd put Mindcrime with The Wall or Darkside anyday, I like MC's concept more, even though they are all dark concepts, except for maybe Darkside, the music on Mindcrime doesen't get me down like it does on The Wall after awhile.

Well yeah, "The Wall" and well at least a couple more records Floyd did are considered great concepts, but I'm just not as into them as I am the Ryche', I'd put Mindcrime with The Wall or Darkside anyday, I like MC's concept more, even though they are all dark concepts, except for maybe Darkside, the music on Mindcrime doesen't get me down like it does on The Wall after awhile.

You're right, the wall can get you down. It's quite hypnotic.

The song "suite sister mary" blows me away on Operation Mindcrime. For a long while it was my favourite song ever. I'm a big fan of vocalists doing changes in a song. Geoff makes it sound like there's multiple singers (4:51 - "Mary my lady of pain, always alone...") Wow, just wow.

J99, Operation Mindcrime is an amazing record. Saw Queensryche twice. Geoff Tate is an amazing vocalist and the drummer is first rate. Do you feel Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is a great concept album, or are you referring strictly to the metal scene?

The Wall is over-rated imo. At least the music. The show is spectacular, the movie is amazing, etc. But Dark Side is far superior.

The song "suite sister mary" blows me away on Operation Mindcrime. For a long while it was my favourite song ever. I'm a big fan of vocalists doing changes in a song. Geoff makes it sound like there's multiple singers (4:51 - "Mary my lady of pain, always alone...") Wow, just wow.

I suppose Mindcrime doesn't get me down cause it's got riffs and well Tate, what a singer, maybe better than Halford in the 80's, he's considered a 2nd rate Halford I hear.

You maybe did not seem to like Paradise Lost's most current record, perhaps one of their classics could change your mind, one of my fav bands for sure:

Whatever's on wikipedia doesn't matter, metal subgenres are decided by the metal community. They are on metal archives anyways, but there's barely any metal to their sound. They are primarily a grunge band. They definitely don't transition into anything like the modern era of metal, they have influences from the classics though like Sabbath.

Look, just cause you only listen to black/death metal does not mean that AIC aren't metal, who gives a fuck about sub genres, if you hear it and it has the spirit of metal, then it's metal, AIC are clearly rooted in classic metal, if you don't think their records have a metal vibe, then I don't know what to say, grunge is just the 90's word for what Sabbath, Motorhead and Zeppelin sounded like then, it's just a marketing ploy, not a genre, they broke quite a bit of new ground for metal, you say that black metal is far more interesting, well I could say to you that it's the least interesting metal genre, most BM is probably worse than punk when it comes to musicianship, in that sense it's anti metal, cause true metal is about really good music, not just putting on some atmosphere and spectacle to talk about Satan, plus it's all about the same subject pretty much, I see BM more as performance art, a message and what the pagan religion does than music, cause really, if the Christian religion had not taken over Norway, would there even be BM, I think not.

Alright, at least my favorite metal record ever, maybe favorite record ever, that's saying something, cause I've heard so much music/metal, you have no idea, songwriting is the best I've ever heard, track 7 is a bit of a dud for me, and the closer is either average or a bit above average, but the rest is pretty top notch, for me it takes all the best or my favorite parts of metal from it's history and puts them here, Metal Hammer UK called it at least one of the 6 best records from the 00's:

But that means any hard rock band could be seen as a metal band. Like AIC obviously belong better alongside Soundgarden and Pearl Jam than alongside Opeth or Gorguts or Dark angel or Drudkh or Mayhem, etc etc. I think it becomes a bit unclear because "AIC" has many similarities to the "nu metal" bands (since they were heavily rooted in grunge) that followed, but like 99% of metalheads don't accept any of the "nu metal" bands as metal.

I guess people who are more old schoolers may accept AIC as a metal band, those who are part of the modern metal movement probably wouldn't.

AIC are pretty different from Pearl Jam which might have the odd metal element, but are def. more hard rock, but you gotta remember that what people call 70's hard rock now, was considered metal then, like Aerosmith for instance, and even Soundgarden, they are a pretty hard band to describe as mostly one thing or another, they cover alot of styles, like punk, metal, hard rock, so in that sense they are the Zeppelin from there, all the bands from that area at that time are quite different from each other, that's just silly to compare what AIC does to extreme metal acts, cause there is clearly a big difference between classic metal and death metal, but it's still all metal, AIC doesn't have so many similarities to "nu", "grunge" is only one part of "Nu", the blueprint for "Nu" is Sepultura's "Roots", there are a few decent so called "Nu" metal bands, but they don't only do that style, they aren't really that "Nu" to me, once again "Nu" is just what the record companies were selling metal as at the time, still just metal though, bands like System of a Down, Mudvayne, Godsmack, Disturbed, Korn. AIC's 1st record can be described as more hard rock, still alot of Guns N' Roses influence there, a fair bit of metal too, 2nd record is so metal though, look, alot of bands band have so many influences on them, but if the base is metal, then it's metal, so you can't say that cause metal evolved/changed to death metal that it makes it more metal or more valid than how AIC changed it, Dirt is a pretty doomy/sludgy metal record, it's quite similar to what Paradise Lost were doing at the same time.

Its not really an issue of the quality of the bands, its just that they don't fit in the genre. Like the nu metal bands, what about korn, or the deftones, or linkin park, or mudvayne, or crazytown was metal? There was distortion sure, but thats about as far as it goes. Bands like Slipknot have some metal influences but the whole detuned distorted riff thing is also an element of grunge, and most of these bands riff structures come more from grunge than from old school metal. Then you get the rock, hip hop and electronic influences that many of those bands brought in, and the metal influence i really on the backburner. I mean, the only thing metal that any of those bands had was the odd metal riff and the odd burst of double kick. AIC on the other hand for sure has a lot of sludgy parts and similarities can definitely be drawn to the old classic metal bands. For me, if AIC are a metal band, then where do you draw the line for hard rock? Their style of riffing is very much in line with the hard rock of the last 2 decades, Stanley's vocals were definitely grunge, the drum lines are thoroughly based in rock patterns, so the only metal element really is the sludgy feel. Another thing, members of bands say a lot of things. Trivium said that The Crusade would be "ridiculously technical thrash metal", while it was basically neither. Anyhow, AIC are on metal archives which means enough people see them as metal that it makes no difference.

ETID and Converge are definitely metalcore but to me at least are two of the highlights of that genre.

Wow that was kind of a waste of time writing all that out

Korn are pretty metal, it's that some people don't like the hip hop element there, but they've made it metal, Deftones I would agree are not as pure of a metal band like AIC, cause they have the vocalist who's really into the art/experimental rock, and the guitarist is a metal guy, so they have like two opposing styles, they def have some metal songs though, Linkin, well they aren't really metal at all, it's like they took the lightest parts of Filter, Korn, Deftones and made it pop, Mudvayne are fairly metal, no question, I don't know how you can listen to them and think that they are not, at least their 1st 3 records are, after that they did some more radio friendly stuff, Crazytown are prob more rock than metal.

The detuned guitar has been around at least since the Beatles did "Dear Prudence", Zeppelin used it a bit, as far as the influence on metal, it comes from Slayer when they started to use it, doom bands used it, then Death used it, hair metal bands used it too, Motley Crue doing it alot, not AIC, Swedish death metal, Tool, Pantera, Prong, Helmet and I'm pretty sure some other bands were also using it at this time too, so it's a Slayer thing, not a Washington State thing, now a lot of metal bands have used it since.

I have Isis final record, best one they did, post-metal, wtf, they are still metal, they are sludgy, doomy, proggy, droney, metal:

GK, not really metal, more prog rock for sure, not my thing.

Cynic are like technical jazz death metal, don't usually like when bands are this technical, I much prefer the later Death records to this:

Karnivool are prob more rock than metal, a fair bit of Floyd going on here, some Tool and lesser known band Oceansize too, I think they are alright, don't quite match up to Tool though, here's their best which I have:

Have you seen that documentary on metal a few years ago by that kid travelling around? I wish I remembered the name. It was very entertaining and brought back a lot of memories. He covered everything from the early days to the current really hard stuff. Some of the characters are real bad asses. I think I'm scared to go to Scandinavia now!